Salman Rushdie’s entire life has been an act of defiance

Suzanne Nossel in The Guardian:

The attack on Rushdie is a wake-up call for all of us who have a stake in free expression, which is all of us, period. While we do not yet know the motives of his attackers, it is hard to envisage a scenario in which this brazen, premeditated attack, the first in memory targeting a writer at a literary event in the United States, had nothing to do with Rushdie’s words and ideas.

The shocking attack on Rushdie comes at a time of intensifying and protean attacks on free expression worldwide. PEN America’s annual Freedom to Write Index tracks the cases of individual writers in prison worldwide. Our research has documented a significant jump in the number of writers, academics, and public intellectuals detained globally over the last few years. Authoritarian governments throwing writers in jail is one potent form of repression of free expression, silencing those targeted and casting a chill over all others who might dare broach controversial topics or buck orthodoxies.

More here.